Embryo (1976)

(On Cable TV, July 2021) Once, just once, I’d like to see a film about the artificial creation of humans that wouldn’t result in the creation turning homicidal. But Embryo is largely a blunt-force horror film and that’s what creatures do in horror films. Rock Hudson (!) stars as a grieving veterinarian who, through the first act, comes to manipulate a human embryo with a fast growth serum. Moments later, here grows a young woman played by Barbara Carrera, not only a beauty but also a genius-level intellect beating chess champions and a psychopath willing to kill in order to prevent her cellular decay. It predictably escalates from there. It’s all quite familiar, although there it has a 1970s atmosphere that almost makes it interesting. I could easily see a triple bill of this, Coma and Demon Seed for a 1970s medical science fiction/horror marathon. Hudson is not bad and neither is Carrera — with small roles for Diane Ladd and Roddy McDowall as a bonus. Embryo’s turn to horror is cheap and predictable, though, and the “don’t play God” moralism is as basic as it comes.